The Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah says there is a need to reorganise the Information Services Department (ISD) in keeping with contemporary times.
To this end, an initiative known as ISD Transformation Program has been put in place. The program, which is in two parts, entails reorganising ISD to reflect today’s needs to be able to do the new jobs that are required whilst the second part involves retooling the Department across the country.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah made the announcement during an interaction with the media in Wa.
GBC’s Emmanuel Mensah-Abludo reports that the Minister also visited GBC’s Radio Upper West where he was conducted round by the Acting Regional Director Christopher Asiedu.
A mixed bag of issues came up during the media interaction. They included the need for the media to rally the citizenry for development, the call on government to #FixTheCountry, COVID-19, taxes, roads, investment opportunities in Upper West and the Right to Information Act.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah made reference to how the Information Services Department (ISD) was structured in the late 1950s and talked about what his Ministry is doing currently to retool the Department. He stated: “The Information Services Department was structured in a particular way that suited the purposes of 1957, 1958 Ghana, the cinema department, exhibition and few other things.
“Today, that old structure may not serve the same purpose with all development in information distribution around us. We are before Cabinet currently for approval for the funding of the retooling exercise. We are hopeful that we will be successful before cabinet and therefore will be able to do this. The President believes that this will be one of his legacies if he is able to do it, so we are pretty optimistic that he will ensure that the funding is approved by cabinet for that purpose.”
Mr Oppong Nkrumah also touched on the reorganisation of the state-owned media.
According to him, “the state-owned media has been in a very dilapidated state for some time now. The challenge is twofold: State-owned media is actually independent, the Minister of Information cannot get involved in the state-owned media’s work that is why the National Media Commission has been put if I may use the word, as an interloper advisedly between the government (the State) and the state-owned media.”
“Additionally, state-owned media, and I say this with the greatest of respect has had a dual identity over the years and that has not been helpful. Take GBC for example, GBC at times will say it is a public broadcaster, at times they say we only pay their salaries they have to raise their own revenues like you do in the private sector for commercials, etc. Yet while they’re playing advert, we will call them that go and carry live from Parliament, or carry this program live from here. How do they play that advert and make money?”
“And it is not always that what they are carrying is something that is of commercial value. So there has been the need to have a frank conversation about how do we reorganise state-owned media.”
Mr Asiedu equally entreated the government to provide logistical support to GBC.
Story filed by Emmanuel Mensah-Abludo.
